


Five Times Zack Didn't Hug Brendon, and One Time He Did

by EdgarAllenPoet



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Angst, Canon, Fluff, Gen, Hugs, Tumblr Prompt, five times fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-04 19:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4149978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EdgarAllenPoet/pseuds/EdgarAllenPoet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Basically just as the title says</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Zack Didn't Hug Brendon, and One Time He Did

1\. The first time Zack ever met Panic! at the Disco was in a dressing room backstage at a venue in California. They were still a young band, still touring with bigger names who had bigger crowds and played bigger venues, but apparently they weren't staying small for long. Pete had called him up and said that he needed a 'babysitter' to keep the boys safe during meet and greets and on the way to venues and stuff. Zack had thought he was joking until he actually met the band and realized that, uhm yeah, they were actually kids.

"Hey guys!" Pete had called out when he entered the room. All eyes immediately snapped towards them. "This is your new body guard. Zack, here's... Three fourths of the band... Not sure where Brendon is..." 

There was a pause where Pete frowned, and Zack worried a bit about whether the babysitter comment had been serious or not. 

"Anyways, I'll leave you to get acquainted," and just like that Pete Wentz was gone, leaving Zack alone in the room full of wide eyed infants. 

One of them jumped to his feet, followed quickly by another who seemed to be hiding behind the first. Pete had told him all of their names, but he didn't remember them exactly and couldn't match the names to faces.

"Nice to meet you," the one said, sticking his arm out for a handshake and smiling politely. He looked a little like a sausage, squeezed into a pink t-shirt and tight jeans, but Zack wasn't going to judge his fashion choices or whatever. Even if he had thought the boy was a girl at first glance. Whatever. 

"My name is Spencer Smith. This is Ryan,"

The smaller boy, who was approximately the same shape as a fishing pole, scowled and hit his friend in the arm. 

"I can introduce myself, asswipe," Ryan hissed, but Spencer just shrugged him off. Right. 

"That's Brent," Spencer said, pointing to the couch, where a boy with dark clothes and floppy hair sat tapping at a cellphone in his lap.

"Sup?" The kid asked. 

Right. Teenagers. 

There was suddenly a loud splat sound, a crash, and a yelp. Ryan jumped, and Brent glared at the door across the room, but Spencer seemed unphased. 

"That's Brendon. He's in the bathroom conducting a 'science experiment,'" Spencer said, making air quotes around the words 'science experiment' and rolling his eyes. Ryan shrugged and went back to flop onto the couch and poke at Brent with his toes. Right. Well. 

Zack was kind of curious about what was going on in the bathroom, so he walked across the room and pushed the door open slowly. It squeaked a bit on its hinges.

There was another splat noise followed by giggling. Zack poked his head inside to see a tiny, dark haired young man holding a tray of fruit and trying not to double over in laughter.

"What are you doing..?" He was kind of afraid to be asking, honestly, but what was that phrase? Nothing ventured, nothing...

"So you see," the boy, who must have been Brendon, said, "I wanted to throw this fruit, right? But I didn't want to make a big mess for whoever had to clean up. So I'm throwing it in here, where it won't be too sticky or ruin the carpet,"

True to his word, there were several pieces of soggy fruit sitting pitifully near the shower drain, and a few colorful splat marks dripping off the shower walls. The kid was apparently being totally punk rock and totally polite at the same time. Right. 

"Makes sense," Zack said for lack of anything else to say. 

Brendon nodded and set the tray down on the sink. There was fruit juice on his hands and arms, almost all the way up to his elbows. There were also smudges of sticky juice on his shirt and chin. 

"You must be our new body guard!" Brendon exclaimed, stepping forward. "Hi! I'm Brendon!"

The boy stepped forward menacingly with his arms spread out, apparently for a hug, but Zack was not about to get covered in fruit juice his first day on the job. Also, he wasn't big on hugging. He was a man, damn it.

His hand was practically the size of Brendon's head, but he reached out anyways and planted it right in the middle of Brendon's forehead, stopping him right there and holding him out at an arms length. 

"Nice to meet you," Zack said.

Brendon just pushed his glasses up his nose and beamed. 

2\. Zack had to hand it to him; it was pretty impressive the way Brendon had jumped right back to his feet and gone on with the show. He'd scared the hell out of all of them, the way the bottle had come out of nowhere and suddenly Brendon had crumpled to the ground. Zack had booked it out there and was ready to kick some serious ass (nobody hurt his band. that was rule number one), but then Brendon had woken up and gotten right back into it, joking with the crowd and saying things like 'can't you guys throw something softer than a bottle next time?'

You would have thought he was perfectly fine, from the way he acted out there, but the moment they got off stage everything changed. 

"Ow," Brendon whined, poking gingerly at his swollen black eye and pouting. "Owww,"

"Stop touching it then," Zack grumbled at him. Brendon just continued to pout. 

"It hurts, Zack," he said. 

"Yeah. So go get changed and you can get checked by a medic for a concussion," Zack told him, but that just made Brendon pout more. For the love of-

"But I don't want to," he whined, folding his arms across his chest and huffing out a breath. 

"You're not five, knock it off," 

Brendon frowned up at Zack, and the eye that wasn't swollen was huge and watery and just down right sad. Puppy dog eyes, apparently. What the hell. He held both skinny arms out slightly, seemingly asking for... Something. Zack rolled his eyes and ruffled Brendon's hair. 

"Go change," he said. 

Brendon stomped into the next room to do that, and there was finally peaceful silence for a minute until-

"Ryan! Those are my pants! What the hell!"

and then

"Ow! Ow I'm injured, Ryan, that's cheating!"

Zack pounded his fist on the door a few times and shouted, "Hurry the hell up,"

3\. If there was one thing Zack knew about rock stars, it was that none of them had healthy sleep schedules. It made sense though. Routine was just one of the casualties of touring, and Panic! at the Disco was no exception.

There was considerably less sleeping now, actually, than when he'd met the band. When he'd first met them, Spencer would stay up too all hours or wake up super early to fiddle with his laptop and write home and check the band's finances, until Zack finally chased him away from the accounts and said he'd take care of it, for the love of God Spencer, chill. Brendon seemed to be affected by shows the way most people were effected by cocaine. After a show he'd stay up bouncing around the too small bus for hours until he finally collapsed somewhere. Either that, or he'd sneak some girl into his bunk and... Well... Same thing actually. Ryan was some kind of insomniac tortured artist who told Zack that 'his soul was the most open at night.' That was pretty much just an excuse for still being awake at 7 am the next morning, and it didn't help Zack's mood when he had to put up with the irritable, sleep deprived Ryan for the rest of the day. Brent was the only one who actually slept when he got the chance, it seemed. He was the only one with sense obviously.

Zack also remembered the big lecture when he'd first started, about how they were all straight edge and there couldn't be any booze or drugs or anything on the bus ever. Zack had nodded and said, "no shit, that's all illegal," which had gotten him a baby faced scowl from Spencer, who had been leading the speech. 

He remembered when Brent had left and Jon had joined, and how the band was weird and shaky for a while as they got used to it. Then one day he'd come onto the bus to find all of them stoned off their gourds. He'd opened his mouth to say something, and Ryan (of all people) had said "Relax, man. Live a little."

After they started smoking for inspiration, their weird sleep schedules got even weirder, but it evened out eventually. Kids think they're indestructible, sometimes, but even these ones were smart enough to figure out they might as well sleep while they could get it. 

Anyways, it shouldn't have been a surprise to see Brendon up and pacing in the practice space at two in the morning. He briefly wondered how Brendon had gotten in there; didn't the door have a lock? Zack had only come down to get his phone, which he'd left sitting on an amp. It wasn't much of a surprise to see Brendon awake, but it was a surprise to see him crying. 

"Brendon? You alright?" He asked, coming into the room. Brendon jumped about a foot in the air and turned around, wiping his sleeves over his face and clearing his throat, trying to school his expression back to normal. 

"Yeah," he said, voice too choked to be convincing. "Yeah I'm great. I just came down here to... Uhm.. Get something,"

"Yeah, no," Zack frowned at him and crossed his arms. "What's up?"

Brendon picked at he sleeve of his hoodie for a moment. He took his glasses off and scrubbed them against his sweat pants before shoving them back on. He tapped his foot and bit his lip and went back to fidgeting with his hoodie...

"Brendon,"

"It's dumb," Brendon said. Zack just waited a moment, because enough experience had taught him that if he just stared at Brendon long enough and tried to look stern, the guy would crack and spill whatever it was he was doing a bad job of hiding in the first place. 

Brendon puffed up his cheeks and blew air out of them, glanced up and then back down, and finally said, "Fine.

"It's just. Ryan wants to sing. And we're all doing different things with this album, and it sounds awesome, duh, it sounds great. But. But they won't listen to me! They'll take Spencer's suggestions and Jon's suggestions and Patrick's suggestions, and of course they'll take Ryan's perfect fucking suggestions, but they don't ever listen to me and I'm sick of it cause they think I'm a God damned idiot or something! 

"And they all want to sing. And Ryan can play all the instruments I can, and I just... They don't need me, and I don't know what to do," Brendon wiped at his cheeks again and kicked his sneaker against the ground. "I'm fucking worthless," he said. "I don't even belong in this band,"

"Hey," Zack said. "Now come on, you know that isn't true,"

Brendon glanced up at him and pursed his lips, like he didn't believe him. Zack just sighed. It was too late and he was too tired for this. 

"This band is as much yours as it is there's," he said. "As much as it is Ryan's,"

A strange expression crossed over Brendon's face, but it quickly got pushed down. 

"You're upset and you're stressed out, but staying up and throwing a fit in the studio isn't going to help anything," 

"I'm not throwing a fit..." Brendon grumbled.

"Come on, bed. You'll feel better after you sleep,"

Brendon scowled and wiped his face off one more time before following Zack out of the practice space and back towards his hotel room. Zack put a reassuring hand on his shoulder and squeezed, but that was all. 

4\. "Ryan and Jon left the band," 

Brendon didn't bother with formalities when Zack picked up his cellphone. Honestly, Zack wasn't surprised. He'd watched this trainwreck coming, and he'd known it was only a matter of time. Bands broke up constantly, some of them over smaller issues than the ones Panic! had. He wasn't that surprised. He was wondering though...

"Spence and I are gonna.. Uhm.. We're still Panic! at the Disco. Like. We're going to keep going," Brendon's voice said over the line. "So if you wanna. I mean. You probably have a contract or something... Shit, I."

"Hey," Zack said, because Brendon was getting that edge to his voice that meant he was about to freak out. Zack had seen enough of the kid's panic attacks to try and diffuse them whenever he saw them coming.

"I'll sort it all out, okay? I'm not going anywhere, man,"

The sniffling sound on the other end meant that Brendon was either crying or close to it. Zack would have probably hugged him if they'd been in person, but he was on the phone, so he just said, "I'll see you soon, bud," and hung up.

The next time he saw them, Brendon and Spencer were both acting like they were determined to be happy. Zack didn't question it, but he also didn't hug them. The time had passed. 

5\. The worst thing about weddings was having to wear a suit. Zack was too big for suits. It just didn't work for him.

The worst thing about this wedding specifically was a moment after the ceremony when he'd been talking to Brendon by the bar, and Brendon had started crying.

"Uhm," this tiny kid, who was somehow smaller than Brendon (Ian Crawford, eighth wonder of the world) nudged Brendon with his elbow. "Are you okay?"

"I'm so happy," Brendon grinned wide and didn't bother wiping the tears off his face. A man had the right to cry on his wedding day, Zack decided, and didn't poke fun at him.

Brendon was also wearing his 'I need a hug face' whether he realized it or not. Yeah, no. That was just a bit too much feelings for one day, actually. It didn't matter though, because within seconds Brendon's mother was right there. 

She shouted "sweet heart!" and wrapped her son up in a hug. Across the room, Zack saw Sarah point and laugh at her new husband. Brendon just looked kind of bashful and blew her a kiss.

6\. Sitting down with Brendon and having this talk was harder than any of the talks they'd had to have right after the band split. The whole situation was harder, actually. 

The thing was, Zack loved Ryan and Jon. How could he not, after he had those little assholes living in his pockets for years. He knew them like he knew the back of his hand, and it was his job to take care of them, so yeah, he was attached. Whatever. 

But Spencer... Damn he'd known that kid for as long as he'd known Ryan and Jon and then years after. It was different. He'd watched Spencer grow up, go from this weird, sassy, kind of pudgy teenager and turn into a man. Knowing someone for almost a decade was kind of an amazing thing. Spencer might as well have been family. He'd also seen how the drugs had been affecting him, though. There had been a few times where he'd found Spencer and had to pick him off the floor. 

It shouldn't have been a surprise when Brendon said, "I talked to Spence, and he can't do this anymore," but damn, it still kind of was.

Brendon wasn't crying, he just stared down, reserved and focused, at his folded hands between his knees.

Zack nodded. He said, "it's for the best," because what else was there to say?

Brendon said, "He needs help,"

The conversation felt so hollow and empty. They hadn't even been out for an entire tour, and Spencer was leaving, right in the middle.

A sudden sob escaped from the younger man in front of him, and Brendon covered his face with his hands when Zack glanced up.

"I'm sorry," he choked out, obviously trying to calm himself down or man up or something. "I'm sorry, fuck. I'm fine. This is so stupid,"

Zack watched Brendon frantically try to wipe off his cheeks and calm down his breathing, and something heavy settled in his chest. He got up from his seat across from Brendon and sat down right next to him.

"It's alright," Zack said, wrapping the smaller man up in a hug and pulling him against his side. "It's okay. Spencer's going to be okay," he said. "I miss him too,"

He let Brendon bury his face in Zack's shoulder and cry.


End file.
